UNDER-FIRE COACH IS STILL STAYING SILENT

DARIO GRADI cut a dishevelled figure when he refused to answer Sportsmail’s questions at his Cheshire home yesterday. But then the 76-year-old, once lauded as ‘one of English football’s best developers of young players’ by the National Football Museum, has made saying very little a habit of late. Since he was suspended from all football-related activity pending an FA investigation into sexual abuse in December 2016, there has barely been a public utterance from Dario Gradi MBE. No sympathy following the horrific accounts of abuse some of his former Crewe players suffered at the hands of ex-coach Barry Bennell — who was described by the judge last week as the ‘Devil incarnate’. No reaction when Bennell was jailed for 31 years. It was not always the way. In 1994, Gradi wrote a letter on Crewe Alexandra-headed paper to a Florida court as part of a campaign of support for Bennell, who was facing six charges of child abuse to which he later pleaded guilty. Bennell had a ‘great ability to communicate with kids and was responsible for bringing many boys to this club’, Gradi wrote, adding: ‘Not once during that time have I ever received a complaint from a boy or his parents of a sexual nature.’ But Hamilton Smith, a former Crewe board member, said in November 2016 he was so concerned about Bennell that he convened two meetings in the late 1980s — the second of which took place in Gradi’s office and was attended by the then manager. Yet Gradi and Crewe have always maintained they knew nothing about Bennell’s offending until the coach was first arrested in the United States in 1994. Gradi’s links with Bennell stretch back to the early 1970s at Chelsea and then Senrab FC, the famous youth team in south-east London. Bennell was a teenager on schoolboy forms at Chelsea, while Gradi was assistant manager in 1971. Their paths crossed again when Bennell was employed by Crewe for the first of his two stints at the club in 1985. Gradi had joined Crewe two years earlier and spent 24 years at the club. Chester Crown Court heard in 1998 that Bennell had admitted abusing a boy at Gradi’s house, although there was no suggestion that Gradi knew what had happened. Another of Bennell’s victims also told Liverpool Crown Court last month that Gradi arranged for him and other young players to stay at the paedophile’s house before stopping the arrangement 18 months later. Bennell left Crewe abruptly in 1992 following a row about how many mothers should accompany a youth team on a trip to the USA. Bennell wanted one mother for every five children, while other Crewe staff wanted a bigger ratio. There is no suggestion that Gradi is under suspicion of abusing minors. Cheshire Police officers routinely asked young players about Gradi during their first inquiry in 1998 and received nothing but positive comments about him.